It is well known that monitoring operations based on “Activity and Results” KPI’s is essential for any Call Center or Telemarketing team. In the end, choosing those vital metrics and monitoring them, is what makes them succeed or not.

Some time ago, this important procedure was done poorly with a delay in showing reports, sometimes waiting weeks or even months. Nowadays the cutting edge call centers can monitor their key metrics in real time, allowing faster interaction and instant feedback. This finally streamlines their operations and improves the motivation of the people involved.

A variety of leaderboards and reporting solutions are available in the market, but the ones that actually work are the ones able to show instant updates automatically. Usually they are directly connected to the original data sources: such as CRM Systems, Data Warehouses, Sales Datamarts, Phone Systems, etc.

Non-real time solutions

There are also some solutions (even with a fancy front end) that require in-between files such as Excel spreadsheets or .txt files. We call that type of technology: a “non-real time” solution.

These types of tools are usually much easier to configure and they can start operating in a matter of minutes, however there are some important disadvantages:

1) Someone is required to manually update the Excel/txt files, increasing the risk of mistakes or errors that may lead to unwanted actions… What happen if that person has a day-off at work?

2) It represents an additional non insignificant cost. Let’s suppose the person needs 15 minutes 4 times a day to upload this data. He will be wasting 1 productive hour a day in this particular task. Considering an average cost/time of $30 an hour per person….in a month the investment will be $600, which means $7.200 by year.

3) In Call Centers and Telemarketing, the operations are so intense that measuring the streamline of the business must be done more often. If we use a Monitor/Leaderboard system updated by hand, an employee would have to do this tedious task at least 8 to 10 times a day resulting in personal fatigue and discouragement.

4) Tracking live scores make people feel more excited, no instant feedback is possible using Excel files. We prefer to celebrate specific outstanding actions (or results) at the same moment they occur.For instance if someone calls 50 clients in a week or closes a $50k deal, a REAL TIME solution catches the event and shares the action with everybody at the same moment the person accomplishes the goal.There is a huge difference between having that information LIVE, than waiting 24 hours until the data can be refreshed by someone editing an Excel file. Something similar happens if someone wins 2 or 3 positions in a leaderboard or if someone climbs to the 1st position. People want to see the changes in the metrics and in the leaderboard immediately, right at the moment it happens.

Leaderboard/Reporting Solutions help companies to track KPI’s and make them visible for everybody. They also aid companies to design tournaments and contests among their people invoking an intense sense of competition and self-improvement.

But… which group of Reporting/Leaderboard solutions is less risky and cheaper? Which one represents a more powerful solution to motivate teams?

Those that, even being easier to deploy, require in-between files updated by people? Or those that take the data directly from the source showing it clearly to anyone in the office?

Alejandro Morales
CEO CRMGamified

https://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/mashup-mockup-sin-sony.png20002500CRMGamified Staffhttps://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/logo.svgCRMGamified Staff2015-12-07 12:25:452015-12-10 12:51:42Tired of updating leaderboards manually? Welcome to the new era of Real Time Leaderboards!

The Boston Celtics, the most successful NBA franchise with 17 championships – more than any other NBA club – has relied on both its historical legacy and modern technology to achieve sales growth.

The Celtics sales team knew about respecting the trust of the fan
and bonding season ticket holders with the team long-term as a
priority, but measuring sales and encouraging the sales group was another story.

Hurrah! Live in the Boston Celtics Offices

See how Hurrah! became an exciting tool to develop their own sales tournament!

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter. It is a chemical messenger originated from a nervous termination that interacts with a specific receptor to produce different physiological responses helping in the transmission of signals in the brain and other vital areas.

Dopamine is found in humans as well as animals, including both vertebrates and invertebrates.

How it works?

This neurotransmitter’s main functions are promoting mental energy, improve attention, impulse control, motivation and determination. When there is a deficient production of dopamine the results are translated in fatigue, dizziness, high desires of sugar or coffee, weight gain, attention problems, decrease of sexual desire and impulse control.
A recent study done by the MIT reveals that dopamine is also the neurotransmitter responsible of motivating us in
the most difficult moments, under a promise of “reward”. This study was made in a population of rats, scientists explain this findings are applicable in the same way with humans.

The results showed that when the rat was approaching an objective or a distant prize the dopamine production increased, this can be seen with Parkinson patients where dopamine is affected and there is not enough motivation to reach objectives or long tasks.

Games and Dopamine

Dopamine Involved in learning and feelings of reward, is released in the brain’s striatum during game activities strengthening the brain cell connections underlying memory and learning, which is why games can be put to educational and therapeutic uses.

Game strategy applications have an appeal that crosses many demographic boundaries, such as age, gender, ethnicity, or educational attainment. Besides being fun and stimulating, they can be used to help set up goals and rehearse working towards them, maintain a record of behavioral change, provide reinforcement, feedback and self-esteem.

Encouraging play, creates excitement and a more lighthearted work atmosphere that in turn stimulates employees to take more creative risks.

How Gamification is helping?

The reasons why people play are very punctual. In a survey made by the CRMGamified team to relatives and coworkers, the answers where centered in these specific reasons:

Socializing: Relationships between players are stronger because entertainment can foster trust, empathy and compassion. It is a perfect way of making new friends and breaking the ice in any situation of shyness.

Stress relief: Play releases endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote the sense of well-being and can even relieve pain.

Revitalizing: As the famous Irish Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

Brain challenges: Playing brain skilled games help prevent Alzheimer and improve brain functionality. Playing games with relatives, co-workers or friends help ward off depression and stress.

Creativity: The best way of learning something as children or adults is by playing. A fun task turns into an easy task immediately, stimulating imagination, and improving problem resolution.

Sports and Dopamine

Athletes are likely to have one thing in common: Higher levels of dopamine. The habit of regular workouts, push them to perform way better than in their last workout. Better known as the brain’s “reward center”, dopamine is essential for concentration, quick reaction time, focus, and what’s most important, good moods.

Food and Dopamine

A balanced diet is a very important step to improve dopamine production, the neurotransmitters are produced from amino acids and these require vitamins and minerals, so the diet must be rich in proteins such as those found in meat, fish, vegetables, beans, eggs and soy.

Work and Dopamine

To determine the consequences of stress during work we should understand the difference between positive stress and negative stress. In both cases there is an emotional condition that models working attitude and effectivity.

Positive stress enhances productivity and performance, while negative stress does completely the opposite. Knowing dopamine is produced in very high levels when a sensation of reward and recognition is present we should be aware that a negative stress will trigger the results we want to avoid.

So how can we turn negative stress into positive stress?

After all the necessary research needed to develop a successful solution, CRMGamified combined two motivation methods proven to work together or separate depending on the needs of the company.

CRM Gamified Motivation Engine Brings the excitement of a sales contest accomplishing goals and having immediate rewards through a simple game platform full of points, levels, badges, challenges under a friendly and precise colorful architecture linked to MS Dynamics CRM.

Hurrah! Shows the information registered in MS Dynamics CRM that can also be measured by CRM Gamified Motivation Engine, in a live slideshow exhibited in TV screens around the office with a rewarding experience of customizable videos, sounds, music, pictures and events recognizing the achievements of teams or individuals.

This technique links work responsibilities with an entertaining game/competition experience, activating an increased production of dopamine thus a positive physical response, showing non-detectable results of work overwhelming or burnout.

S.M.

https://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/d1-e1439826657788.jpg305316CRMGamified Staffhttps://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/logo.svgCRMGamified Staff2015-08-18 12:09:522016-03-09 16:52:15Dopamine: How Gamification helps its production making us healthier?

When faced with the decision to buy a modern leaderboard or problems like CRM adoption and engagement, you may wonder, why others have chosen Hurrah! Leaderboard for their organization? Here are the top 9 reasons to choose Hurrah! for your company:

Increase Public Recognition

This is a great way to motivate employees, a fundamental strategy to increase individual and organizational success.

Achieve Company Goals

Employees get a full picture of the company goals and how their actions are going to help achieve those goals, when they see the data displayed on Hurrah!, allowing them to feel the value they bring, increasing engagement and aligning personal goals with the company’s.

Increase CRM Adoption

People are going to want to see their faces up in that screen, to do this, they’ll need to enter information in CRM.

A year has gone by already! It feels like only yesterday we were working on our first Sprint for Hurrah!. We knew it was going to be an awesome year, but it was much more than we expected!

From the beginning we had great opportunities, starting with the Miami Dolphins! We’ve told you before how they were able to accelerate sales with Hurrah!. They were able to achieve higher ticket sales than ever using Hurrah! Leaderboard with their CRM.

More and more sports companies began checking out Hurrah! and found a solution that surpassed their expectations. Great organizations like the Charlotte Hornets, Minnesota Timberwolves, San Diego Padres and more! But Hurrah! is not only popular with the Sports Industry. It’s a global solution used to motivate users, recognize performance and drive more sales. Insurance companies and recruitment companies have discovered Hurrah! and love it. And we couldn’t be happier!

It’s been a wild ride here at CRMGamified, working hard to make Hurrah! better and better, adding new features, and evolving the solution! We want to thank everyone who trusted us, all our customers –our primary source of inspiration and improvement– partners and the Hurrah! team! We’re just getting started!

Don’t miss this opportunity to get a closer look at Hurrah! Call Center Week is one of the prime events for Call Center industry with over 120 speakers, +2000 attendees, +1000 companies participating. Awesome new content, expo, conferences, awards, interviews and a mentalist! Yes, a mentalist!

Focusing on case studies, solutions for enhancing customer experience, employee engagement, business results and much more! A week of dedication where you’ll be having over 90 hours of training and development. If you want to know more, check out the event’s website.

As you know, measuring performance is key to this industry. Hurrah! delivers performance data in near real time and displays results in your preferred format: leaderboards, dashboards, dynamic values, and much more! You can choose to trigger key events and showcase them. For example, celebrate the person who broke the phone call record today, or congratulate the team who hit the Call Resolution Goal for the week! And that’s not all, you can also set countdowns, announcements and media to keep people focussed on their goals.

You can instantly share company metrics, as well as give employees immediate recognition for a job well done –one of the best motivators– low cost and effective!

As a Sales Manager or VP of Sales who leads a team, you know it is a real challenge to help your sales force achieve their goals.. Your sales team needs to be focused on performing activities that actually lead to results. But what are those activities, how do you identify them and why are they important?

Well, let´s start with the Outcome (real or desired). This is a set of numbers that are pretty clear in your mind, i.e. close rates, weekly or monthly revenue, etc. These numbers are indicators, they can be measured and represent results. They are a numerical representation of your sales teams’ efforts. But as was stated earlier, those numbers are the results, the “final score” and won´t tell you anything about the performance of your sales team or how to improve it.

That´s when KPIs come in. Key Performance Indicators are essential to your organization´ success, in other words they are key to achieve the desired outcomes. KPIs are related to that portion of your team´s performance that can be measured and have a clear influence on the results.

Simply put, KPIs are the activities sales teams need to focus on to make sales happen.

Motivating teams and driving behaviors that improve performance is Hurrah! Leaderboard’s main purpose.

Hurrah! is already out there helping professional sports organizations’ sales teams from the NBA, NFL, MLB and MLS, as well as Life Insurance Companies and Technology Companies improve productivity, boost sales and perform key sales activities every day.

But the scope of Hurrah! is wide and we are happy to tell you Hurrah! is also now helping sales teams in a Professional Staffing & Recruitment Company.

Hurrah! has been implemented in one of the world’s largest recruitment companies, with their own international network of approximately 100 branches in more than 40 countries and a permanent Recruitment Division of five global sales hubs.

Hurrah! Leaderboard allows this company to measure metrics they consider as key performance indicators. Not only encouraging and motivating the “performers” but also making it easier and simpler for managers to be aware of, monitor and show teams’ performance in each hub.

Hurrah! Leaderboard is located around their offices, making each workday more focused and fun by having teams competing from different parts of the world. Metrics –defined by the company- are drawn from CRM, measured and displayed. From evaluating met expectations within a defined period of time, to ranking daily vacancies, new jobs, weekly interviews/calls and meetings, Contract Placements and submittals in the current month.

The flexibility Hurrah! provides makes it possible for this company to evaluate each metric and behavior they consider important, define and redefine successful processes and easily share rankings, graphical data and successful practices.

Do you want to know how many sales calls have been made today by a team located in Houston? Or Toronto? Or do you want to share visibility with the whole company of your teams’ successful month and or climb to the top of the “Placements this Month” ranking? Well, you can do it with Hurrah!

About Us

Founded in 2011, and having presence in the US, Canada and Latin America, CRMGamified® provides modern technology to help companies improve sales and service performance by leveraging gamification.

We offer a metrics-driven approach and CRM add-ons to promote behaviors that lead to substantial revenue growth, increased employee engagement, and improved productivity of outbound teams across the globe.